Dean really should consider a career in professional wrestling if this whole presidency thing doesn’t work out for him.

Beat the anti-gun crowd at their own language game:

Don’t call them assault weapons, call them “sport-utility rifles.”

With Democrats expected to introduce legislation extending a ban on assault weapons this session, gun-rights activists are gearing up for a fight.

Sen. Alex X. Mooney, R-Washington/Frederick, has been referring to the weapons as sport-utility rifles, which sounds so much less intimidating, doesn’t it?

Assault Weapons Ban criminalizes gun owners because it’s a victimless crime law. Well, duh!

Illinois trying for an all out ban on semi-automatics.

And Maine shoots down a state level assault weapons ban. Good for them.

I read somewhere that Sigarms has released a P229 with a spurless hammer. I wonder if I can just buy the hammer and install it on an existing P229?

Justin is dishing out some insurance advice.

Someone is trying to resurrect it:

A resolution recognizing ”God as the foundation of our national heritage” could be back before the Knox County Commission next month.

Commissioner Ivan Harmon says he will strike a controversial phrase in the original nonbinding resolution in hopes some commissioners who voted against it in November will now support it. Three counties have OK’d it since then, so he plans to present it to the commission in February.

John “By the way, did I mention I was in Vietnam” Kerry won Iowa; And Edwards second? Dean third? It happened in Iowa. I find it rather shocking.

The good news, Gephardt may be done:

Dick Gephardt is conceding the Democratic presidential nomination to one of his rivals, acknowledging after a disappointing fourth-place finish in Iowa that “this didn’t come out the way we wanted.”

Aides said Gephardt was returning home to St. Louis and would formally withdraw at midday Tuesday.

Maybe if he’d bother to go to work at his day job, he’d have done better.

Now where was I? . . . Oh yeah . . . I imagine the Southern Baptists are rather surprised. We’ve had a lottery for over ten hours and God hasn’t hurled any lightning bolts at us . . . yet.

Pretty Funny!

Blogging today will be lighter than usual.

Leave a comment about which template you like better, this one or the older one.

Wow! The four way tie surprised the crap out of me. Guess we’ll know tomorrow.

This recipe is for some fine homemade salad dressing. It has been dubbed Hawaiian Dressing not because it’s actually Hawaiian but because when my mom learned to make it, we lived in Hawaii.

Ingredients
5 tablespoons of vinegar (white)
5 tablespoons of olive oil
5 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons of Salad Supreme
3 tablespoons of mayonnaise

Combine ingredients in salad shaker or jar. Shake vigorously. Use as salad dressing. Refrigerate any unused portion.

Trust me, it’s delicious!

Seems the advice from Manish and Les helped. Let me know if you there are other problems with the template. And let me know your opinion of it.

How do you like this template? Quick question though for any web gurus out there: Why is it when I put something in a blockquote tag, the second paragraph and subsequent paragraphs are indented. Like this:

Blockquote

Blockquote

Blockquote

I only used one block quote tag.

One more question: I wanted to add a border around blockquotes so I added this to my stylesheet:

blockquote {text-align: justify; border: 2 dotted #384B55;}

But it’s not working. Any body know?

Update: One more, look at the links at the right. Some are indented and some aren’t. It’s a p class or p linktitle thing, I think.

Justin has moved Elephant Rants to new digs. Adjust accordingly!

Via Bill Hobbs, comes an article in The Tennessean that states a panel essentially concluded Tennessee needs a state income tax. I don’t oppose an income tax on the surface. What I do oppose is income tax without repealing sales tax. Most states have a history of lowering sales taxes to implement an income tax. Then in a few years sales taxes are raised again. That’s what one of my former accounting instructor’s told his class and I have no reason to doubt him and do not for a minute trust our legislators to not do otherwise.

Until sales tax is repealed and constitutionally held so, I’ll oppose the state income tax.

When you have to expend 64 pages to explain away one sentence, that may be a sign that you’re reaching a bit.

In 2000, there were 129,373,500 returns filed. Of which, 96,817,603 were taxable and 32,555,897 were not.

One good thing about the upcoming primaries is that it very likely signals the end of Dick Gephardt’s political career. To wit:

The American Conservative Union filed suit yesterday, demanding that Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-MO) pay back 90 percent of his $157,000 salary. Mr. Gephardt missed more than 90 percent of votes in the U.S. House during 2003, and the law requires the secretary of the Senate and the chief administrative officer of the House to dock a member’s pay for each absent day.

Yellocake may have come from Iraq. I’ll reserve judgment instead of jumping the gun . . . this time.

I said it before and it continues to be true. A VPC propaganda release:

In his opinion, Judge Walton, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, wrote: “[T]he Court must conclude that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to possess firearms. Rather, the Amendment’s objective is to ensure the vitality of state militias.”

Now George, since you had your administration file documents stating the Second Amendment confers an individual right, you may want to step in and do something about this. Or at least give Walton a talking to. Saying one thing and lending support to another is rather appalling.

USNewswire:

SB 2165, sponsored by Sen. Ed Petka (R-Plainfield), provides an affirmative defense to a violation of a municipal ordinance that prohibits, regulates, or restricts the private ownership of firearms if the individual who is charged with the violation used the firearm in an act of self-defense or defense of another.

The bill was drafted and filed in response to a controversial shooting in Wilmette, IL earlier this month. In that case, a homeowner shot a late night intruder in his home. The homeowner was later arrested for violating Wilmette’s ban on private handgun ownership. The homeowner’s arrest has generated nationwide protests and a flood of calls and emails to the Wilmette village hall.

Of course, why there’s not just a bill to repeal the stupid law is beyond me.

I am now no longer the number one Google for Spiked Bracelets. I guess these things are popular now as I got bumped to page two and actual retailers occupy the first page. I should have capitalized on that claim to fame, what with the 20 or so hits it brought a month. The down side is that I’m no longer getting entertaining comments to this post, which you really should read for a good laugh.

Some comical and popular searches here at your favorite avuncular site:

Three most popular:

SUV deduction, marey carey, jim bob cooter;

Weird ones:

kids love their uncle and their uncle detained, the tick secret message from my teeth, bi semi confusion, hairy boobs female pic, bleeding bladders in cats;

My favorites:

say uncle punk, owlshit, skunk monkey, logistical problems while running revolution, rich liberals sickening, liberal pinkos;

Lastly, I am glad to say I’ve provided valuable service to some folks:

why dogs attack other dogs, how to get skunk smell out of the house, how to build an ar15, how to sue an airline for incompetence, mom is buying a trailer from someone we need to see if he is paying the taxes how would we do that.

That Ricky, one observant guy:

Al Gore has gone further to the left over the last decade than Zell Miller has gone to the right.

A Chicago alderman has proposed banning pit bulls from the city:

The ordinance introduced yesterday would make it illegal for anyone to own a pit bull terrier dog or a pit bull mix. Owners would have 30 days to get rid of their animals. And violators would face fines of up to one-thousand dollars and up to six months in jail.

The proposal comes almost a year after one woman was killed and another mauled in pit bull attacks in the Dan Ryan Woods in Chicago.

The mayor’s office has opposed a breed-specific ban. And an official with the Humane Society of the United States says such an ordinance would be almost impossible for animal-control authorities to enforce.

Good for the mayor. Shame on WBBM because the picture they show is actually a bull terrier, like Spuds MacKenzie – the original party animal; or William the Conqueror – Patton’s dog. That rather enforces the Human Society’s claim that it’s impossible to regulate the ban since you can’t scientifically determine what breed of dog a particular dog is. Remember, there is no scientific way to determine which breed a specific dog is, they basically have the same genes. It is entirely based on appearance (or papers).

It is estimated that total income tax receipts in 2003 will be $1,211,843,000,000.

Radley Balko writes that the best thing conservatives can do is vote for Dean. I suppose the only good Republican is one that is fighting Democrats.

I agree with Spoons that conservatives will be better off if Dean wins. But most conservatives can’t bring themselves to pull that lever.

Ashby says it best:

“For every Democrat and swing vote Bush has bought with our tax dollars, he deserves to lose a Republican vote,” Ashby says. “I think the president is a good human being. He seems like a very warm and caring person. But he has put politics over principle one too many times.”

But Ashby sounds a lot like part Democrat, part Libertarian.

So Bush wants to send men to the moon and Mars. I understand we can likely get a man to Mars but can we get him back? Who the hell would want that job? But I digress.

I think space travel is cool. Space travel has also lead to advances in technology that have benefited society. But it’s damn expensive.

And to be honest, I don’t really care. Suppose we go to Mars and they even make it back with some rocks and stuff. Will we really learn volumes of things that we don’t already know? I tend to think not. Unless they bring back a Martian, it’s doubtful we’ll discover much that is new. But a Martian would be cool.

To sell this thing, someone needs to spell out the benefits of a moon base. The government shouldn’t be doing stuff just because it’s cool.

Indigo tells us that people 30 and over should very likely be dead. This reminds me of a conversation between my sister and my dad:

Sister: We know so much more about child development and food that kids today are smarter.

Dad: You mean to tell me those idiots with the shit in their face, their hats pointing to the side, and the pants that hang down to their knees are smart?

John has a summary of the IRS using McCain-Feingold to suppress political speech.

I’m fairly certain that FoxNews has had a picture of Michael Jackson on their main page almost every day for the last two weeks. Lame.